1900-07-01 10.2307/j50001037 7 637 10.2307/j50001037 636 1900 10.2307/27899183 themonist 636-637 Psychology and Life. By Hugo M?nsterberg, Professor of Psychology in Har vard University. Boston and New York : Houghton, Mifflin and Company, The Riverside Press, Cambridge. 1899. Pages, xiv, 286. Price, $2.00. Two of the essays included in this volume are already well known to the public and gave rise a year or so ago to much discussion?a good fortune that seems to have marked more than one of Professor M?nsterberg's recent deliverances. These essays are entitled, "The Danger from Experimental Psychology" and "The Teacher and the Laboratory," and appeared in The Atlantic Monthly. They are an attack on the psychological fad which now enthralls our educational thought, or lack of thought, and are reprinted as supplementary interpretations of his educa tional views. The other six essays are entitled : (1) Psychology and Life ; (2) Psy chology and Physiology ; (3) Psychology and Education ; (4) Psychology and Art ; (5) Psychology and History ; and (6) Psychology and Mysticism. With most men who have kept their eyes open during the last ten years Pro fessor M?nsterberg believes that intellectually we are suffering from a species of psychological plague. He says : '1 The period of psychology, of the natural science of the mental life, has begun. It dawned ten, perhaps fifteen years ago, and we are living in the middle of it. No Edison and no R?ntgen can make us forget that the great historical time of physics and physiology is gone ; psychology takes the central place in the thought of our time, and overflows into all channels of our life. It began with an analysis of simple ideas and feelings, and it has developed to an insight into the mechanism of the highest acts and emotions, thoughts and crea tions. It started by studying the mental life of the individual, and it has rushed forward to the psychical organisation of society, to social psychology, to the psy chology of art and science, religion and language, history and law. It began with an increased carefulness of self-observation, and it has developed to an experi mental science, with the most elaborate methods of technique, and with scores of great laboratories in its service. It started in the narrow circles of philosophers, and it is now at home wherever mental life is touched. The historian strives to day for psychological explanation, the economist for psychological laws ; jurispru dence looks on the criminal from a psychological standpoint ; medicine emphasises the psychological value of its assistance ; the realistic artist and poet fight for psy chological truth ; the biologist mixes psychology in his theories of evolution ; the philologist explains the languages psychologically ; and while aesthetical criticism systematically coquets with psychology, pedagogy seems ready even to marry her." The solution Professor M?nster berg sees only in absolute divorce. He says again : '1 The chief aim of this book is the separation of the conceptions of psychol ogy from the conceptions of our real life. Popular ideas about psychology suggest that the psychological description and explanation of mental facts expresses the ocr-156 p-156 BOOK REVIEWS. 637 reality of our inner experience. It is a natural consequence of such a view that our ethical and aesthetical, our practical and educational, our social and historical, views are subordinated to the doctrines of psychology. These papers endeavor to show that psychology is not at all an expression of reality, but a complicated trans formation of it, worked out for special logical purposes in the service of our life. Psychology is thus a special abstract construction which has a right to consider everything from its own important standpoint, but which has nothing to assert in regard to the interpretation and appreciation of our real freedom and duty, our real values and ideals. The aim is thus a limitation of that psychology which wrongly proclaims its results as a kind of philosophy ; but this limitation, which makes the traditional conflicts with idealistic views impossible, gives at the same time to the well-understood psychology an absolute freedom in its own field, and the whole effort is thus as much in the service of psychology itself as in the service of the rights of life." And this point of view the Professor then applies to our public life, our educa tion, our art, and our science. The application is self-confessedly pugilistic : he aims, he says, not to amuse, but "to fight," believing even as a psychologist that the ' ' critical examination of the rights and limits of a science is the chief condi tion for a sound and productive growth." u. ocr-157 p-157 eng 4 July, 1900 The Monist 10 μ. 1 10.2307/i27899163 Copyright 1899–1900 The Open Court Publishing Co. book-review 00269662 Münsterberg Hugo